Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 – Mostly excellent

Samsung has built an ecosystem of mobiles, tablets, watches and headsets, and the idea is, of course, that it should add something if you have Samsung for everything. The latest headsets come in two models, the more expensive Galaxy Buds 4 Pro with in-ear plugs and the Galaxy Buds 4, which have an open design.

The fact that they are open means that they do not have a rubber plug that you push into the ear, but only an opening that directs the sound into the ear. Think the original Airpods. The advantage is, among other things, that they are more comfortable if your ears are easily irritated. Both pros and cons are that you always hear the sounds of your surroundings because they don’t work like earplugs that shut out the outside world.

They still shut out a bit, because the headset actually has active noise reduction. Not nearly as much as the Galaxy Buds 4 Pro with their closing rubber pads have, but some of the ambient noise is still removed with the noise reduction on. There is also a listen-through mode that instead picks up the surrounding sounds so you are sure to hear bicycle bells or checkout staff.

Elegant shape

The design of the earcups stands out with its flat metal rail on the outside, which in itself is an achievement when all headsets look the same. You control them by pinching the stick or swiping to adjust the volume. It’s a bit impractical, it’s where you hold the headset when you adjust the fit as well, the outside of the headset would have been easier. Either way, it’s a definite improvement over the triangular sticks on the Galaxy Buds 3.

As I said, the open construction is both an advantage and a disadvantage. I know many people who absolutely do not want anything else, I personally think that music automatically sounds worse in open headsets, and if I am in a noisy environment, I have to turn up the volume to hear what I am listening to, which becomes tiring for the ears. With these limitations, I still think the headset sounds good for an open design. But I also notice that they depend on the shape of the ears. The earbuds fit a little differently in my left and right ear, with the result that I get better sound and noise reduction in my left ear than in my right ear.

I mentioned that one of Samsung’s thoughts is that the headset should be best with Samsung mobiles. It is noticeable, among other things, that the headset’s settings appear directly in the mobile’s usual settings when the headset is connected to a Samsung mobile. The headset works with other manufacturers’ mobiles as well, but then you need Samsung’s app to adjust the settings.

In the settings, I also find something interesting, such as the fact that I can get Samsung’s own high-resolution sound at the expense of battery life. If you don’t have Samsung, AAC is the best transfer technology. The headset can also use UWB technology on Samsung mobiles to get better call sound.

Problems with calls

The sound of the call turns out to be unexpectedly problematic. Unexpected because both the predecessor Galaxy Buds 3 and the sister model Galaxy Buds 4 Pro have excellent call sound. I notice early on that it’s a problem so people complain that they can’t hear what I’m saying when I answer in the headset. When I test a little more thoroughly with the family’s trusted test pilot, I learn that every s and f becomes like a slur that sort of smears over the words, even breath sounds disturbing. I can state for myself that this is the case when we switch roles.

I test with and without hi-res call sound, compare with the call sound from the Galaxy Buds 4 Pro and even ask to bring home another copy of the headset, but the result is the same. Next, I try with different mobiles and get the same result when I change to another Samsung mobile with the same result and then with a Xiaomi mobile and then, only then does the disturbing reading disappear and I get perfectly fine call sounds. or rather the person I’m talking to gets it, but for me who uses the headset it sounds worse. Worst with Samsung, then, oddly enough.

This must therefore be some kind of bug in Samsung’s software that we can hope will be corrected in a future update. If this happens, the call sound will be excellent because the headset is really good at filtering out even heavy traffic noise without the call quality being significantly affected.

If you have several Samsung devices, for example mobile phone and tablet, you can pair them all with the headset and then it will switch the sound source to the device you used last. On the other hand, the headset does not support standard Bluetooth Multipoint with two simultaneous connections that almost all other headsets have today.

I enjoy using the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 during testing, they’re easy to take out of the case and handle, and as long as I’m not outdoors I don’t think much about the audio limitations of the open design. If they had only been useful in conversation it would have been a clear recommendation, now it becomes more of a hope that the problem will be solved.